


Mortal, guilty

by odalisque (fifteenstitches)



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Student/Teacher, Blow Jobs, Caning, Light BDSM, M/M, Rimming, Teacher-Student Relationship, Using my literature degree for evil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:41:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24823990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fifteenstitches/pseuds/odalisque
Summary: “If you need feedback or guidance, my office is always open,” Mr Finch says, his eyes tight. The last time John had come to his office hours, he’d locked the door behind him.
Relationships: Harold Finch/John Reese
Comments: 4
Kudos: 66





	Mortal, guilty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [paenteom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paenteom/gifts).



> One day I’m going to end up in the hell that writers go to and I’m going to have to look John Keats himself in the face and beg him for forgiveness.
> 
> Title and first quote is from Lullaby by W. H. Auden (completely the wrong period for a Romanticism class, but how could I leave out the expert in gay teacher longing?)

_Every farthing of the cost,  
All the dreaded cards foretell,  
Shall be paid — but from this night  
Not a whisper, not a thought,  
Not a kiss nor look be lost._

* * *

He’s asked John to call him Harold in private, but on campus he’s always Mr Finch. John doesn’t think he could change that even if he was asked to. Standing there at the front of the class, one hand leaning on the lectern while the other gesticulates earnestly on the literary context of Keats’s _Endymion,_ Mr Finch seems untouchable — the perfect model of a university professor who lived for the text and neatly ceased to exist the second he stepped out of a lecture hall. 

Certainly not the type of man to kiss his students suddenly in a conference hotel room, hours after midnight with an empty bottle of Dom Pérignon between them. Sitting here in the middle of a row of students in varying states of interest, John can’t feel the heat of Mr Finch’s skin against his. He can’t taste champagne on Mr Finch’s tongue — can’t hear the breaths, shallow but real, that prove Mr Finch is flesh and blood.

The movement around him interrupts his reverie. The lecture is over — students stand and pack their things, chatting, the figure at the front forgotten about as they file out of the door. John follows suit, avoiding looking at Mr Finch directly. Luckily, Mr Finch approaches him first.

“If you need feedback or guidance, my office is always open,” Mr Finch says, his eyes tight. The last time John had come to his office hours, he’d locked the door behind him.

“Okay,” John says quickly. 

“For help writing your essay,” Mr Finch confirms wearily, students still filing past them. “That is my job, after all.”

“Right.” 

To the best of John’s knowledge, no-one suspects a thing. True, they might have noticed the way John listens to Mr Finch’s lectures with rapt attention, or the way his eyes follow Mr Finch’s hands a little too closely as they turn the pages of his textbook. But no-one knows about the extra study periods, the ones where Mr Finch quizzes him on next week’s reading and rewards him with deep kisses that make John’s head spin; the evenings where John waits for him outside the Humanities building after dark and they fuck in the back of Mr Finch’s car, hot and dark and desperate. John’s still getting his head round it, this thing they’re doing, these things that he’s allowed to do.

He’s always been good at keeping secrets. 

“How’s 4:30 tomorrow?” Finch asks, not meeting his eyes. “Unfortunately I’m fully booked today.”

John quells the sting of rejection. “Great, see you then.” 

“If you could bring an essay plan, I’d be most obliged.”

“Will do,” John says, and on impulse adds, “Looking forward to it.”

Finch looks at him them, with all the hidden guilt and pity that John hates, and he has to stop himself from leaning forward and biting the expression from his mouth.

*

John knows he can’t make a mistake, or Mr Finch will stop everything. Sometimes, when they’re lying together in the haze of afterglow, John thinks he hears love in Finch’s voice; other times the man withdraws, stares at his hands in something like disgust. 

It’s John’s fault. And so John has to be the absolute best he can be, in every way that Mr Finch would notice. His essays in Mr Finch’s class shoot from a B to an A+, and he knows it’s because they deserve the grade (whatever happens between them, a universal constant is the fairness of Mr Finch’s marking). John’s never worked so hard in his life, reading journals well into the early hours, maxing out his library card, turning down nights at the student bar in favour of a quiet corner where he can get his head down. It’s worth it. A pleased smile from Mr Finch across the lecture theatre is worth any amount of coffee-soaked all-nighters. 

Their office trysts are like nothing John’s experienced before, which is absurd — he’s not exactly an innocent, despite what Mr Finch seems to think — but somehow when it’s Finch’s hands on him it’s something new. John reads Shelley and Keats, immerses himself in the sublime and thinks, _yes,_ Wordsworth’s mountain rising from the mist, wonder beyond comprehension, _exactly_. 

It feels like a bubble, but outside the world keeps turning. Athletics season comes around and John, whose scholarship depends on his track record, spends less and less time in the library and more sweating in shorts on the race track. He wonders idly if Mr Finch’s path across campus ever brings him down to the sports center — whether John might one day look up only to see him in the stands, peering down at him through his glasses. Whether he might wave. He doesn’t check the stands, obviously. These were idle thoughts, pleasant musings that just happened to occur to him occasionally. He wasn’t obsessing about it. Well, it was really impossible _not_ to look at the stands, if you thought about it.

“Mr Reese, a moment?” 

It’s the end of a particularly challenging Literature class. The summer heat had done nothing to help John’s concentration, and it seemed to be affecting Mr Finch too — he’d finally forgone the coveted jacket of his suit, resting it on the back of his chair and rolling up his shirt sleeves to the elbows. After two hours of utter torture, during which Mr Finch had tenderly recited Auden — _Lay your sleeping head, my love / Human on my faithless arm_ — the class finally draws to a close. John follows his fellow students towards the door, hanging back slightly because — well, because he needs to sort his books out, obviously, his shoelace is tied but not to his satisfaction, his notes are in the wrong order and must be sorted before he can think of leaving.

And then it’s just the two of them. John straightens up, walks to the door, and focuses on his breathing when Mr Finch calls him back.

“Sir?”

Finch’s hand brushes his arm and rests there, barely touching, but it sinks into John’s skin like a brand. 

“I just wanted to check in with you about your essay,” he says quietly. “I thought you should know that it hasn’t shown up on the submission form.” 

A hollow feeling settles in John’s stomach. 

Finch’s expression is one of pure concern. Nothing in his face reveals that the two of them are anything other than teacher and student; John is reminded once again of how impossibly easy it would be for that to be true. 

“Yeah,” he says, his mouth dry. “I didn’t submit it.”

Finch frowns at him as if this couldn’t possibly be, and John feels his stomach drop another few inches. “That’s not like you,” Finch says, still insisting on that note of concern that John doesn’t deserve. “Is everything alright?”

“I’m sorry,” John says before he can stop himself. “It’s — track practice is crazy, but that’s no excuse. I’ll make it up to you. Not like—” He curses as Mr Finch shifts back slightly, a knife to the gut. “I didn’t mean — that. Any extra work you want me to do, I’ll make up the grade.”

“I know you will, Mr Reese,” Finch says with a quiet smile, “It’s the first deadline you’ve missed, it’s not the end of the world.”

John flushes. 

“Why didn’t you ask for an extension?” Mr Finch’s voice is so gentle. John hates it even as he fights the urge to step closer. “There’s no need to get so worried.” He chuckles. “I’m not some Victorian schoolmaster standing over you with a cane.” 

It’s the heat in this hall, the fucking _heat_. John forces out a laugh, and then crosses the room and closes the door without thinking, because then he’s moving, not reacting, and he’s not looking at Mr Finch. 

He’s not thinking about the stern line of Finch’s mouth, or his hand on the small of John’s back, guiding him firmly to bend over his desk. 

He’s certainly not thinking about Finch with a cane in his hand. Lying helpless across his desk, limp with pain, taking whatever Finch gives him.

John abruptly realises that a) he’s gone red, b) he hasn’t replied for at least 30 seconds, and c) Mr Finch is staring at him with a mixture of concern and fascination on his face. 

“Sorry,” he says, hoping against hope that Finch doesn’t notice the roughness in his voice. “Just — it’s really hot in here.”

“I see.” 

John sincerely hopes not.

“You must know that I —” Finch stops. John’s heart clenches in his chest. 

“Whatever you need from me, John,” he’s saying instead. Mr Finch’s eyes are wide behind his glasses, for once empty of pity. In its place there’s only honesty, determination, and something John doesn’t quite dare to call longing. “You only have to ask.” 

*

He really tries not to think about it. 

He's got to be quiet - the walls of this shitty flat hold no secrets, and while he's pretty sure his neighbours aren't listening he doesn't much fancy showing up on some outraged anonymous forum. He goes through his usual mental library - Mr Finch in class last week reading Shelley, his mouth turning the 200 year old text into something living, something that moved. In the seminar after, making eye contact, that shot of adrenaline to the heart. The way he smelled, green tea and the barest hint of cologne; the way he sounded when he was inside John, how his breathing changed, the only thing that could get him to sound less than impeccably in control. 

John squeezes his eyes shut, leans into the feeling, lets the waves wash over him. 

Okay, maybe this — the last time they'd fucked, Mr Finch's hand gripping the back of his neck, John lost in his gaze, the cramped space of Finch’s car amping the sound of their breathing until everything was Finch, sound, sight, smell, taste and touch.

John twists, moves faster, thinks about pushing Finch's car seat back and squeezing into the space at his feet. Remembers nuzzling into him, the drag of Finch's hands in his hair, the hard heat of his cock under his cheek, his mouth. The taste, heavy on his tongue. 

John grunts in frustration. It's not enough, and he knows it. He's spent all evening aggressively avoiding the thought, fully aware that it's something he could never —

 _I’m not some Victorian schoolmaster standing over you with a cane_. 

John groans as heat spikes in his belly, strokes himself and crests and and and — 

*

“Where did you get this?” Mr Finch asks weakly. 

John shifts. “It's, uh. A theatre prop.”

For a second Mr Finch looks intrigued. “Really? What's the production?”

“Little Women. My friend Lionel is playing Bhaer.”

Finch smiles. “He's well-cast.”

“You haven't heard his German accent,” John says, lightheaded. 

“That's not where you got the idea, I hope?” 

“No,” John says quickly, and it's true—it's something that's been lurking in his brain in one form or another for longer than he'd like to admit. “That's not what this is.”

“And what is this?” Finch takes the cane out of his hands, examines it. “I’m assuming you’re not after a quick rap on the knuckles.”

John swallows. “Whatever,” he says. “I mean, it’s up to you. Whatever you like. Whatever you think I—”

 _Deserve_.

Mr Finch turns his gaze on him, staring as if he’s searching for something. John feels his knees weaken and an aching glow start in his chest at the slow, steady attention. No-one’s ever looked at him like Mr Finch does, like he’s really listening, not just to what John’s saying but also to what he’s _not_ saying. 

Then his expression shifts, almost imperceptibly; the kind of change, John thinks, you’d only notice if you spent every waking moment thinking about Mr Finch.

“I would like,” Finch says eventually, “to make sure that the next time you’re sitting in my class on those hard wooden benches, you’ll remember the consequences of failing to meet my deadlines.”

John meets his eyes and swallows. His pants are uncomfortably tight.

“Please choose a safeword,” Mr Finch says. 

“I don’t need one.”

Finch gives him a look. “It wasn’t a request, Mr Reese.”

Fine. John wracks his brain for something appropriate. “‘Sublime’. How’s that?”

For a second Mr Finch smiles, just a quirk of his mouth. “In all its terrifying ecstacy? No pressure there, then.”

John laughs. He’s spinning out, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Nervous excitement. He fights to get ahold of himself.

Mr Finch steps forward and frowns; John tries to look at him, but the cane in his hands keeps drawing his gaze. 

“It’s just — you’re trembling, are you sure this is —” 

John nods, furious with himself. “I want to. Really.”

The worried crease between Finch's eyebrows doesn't ease. John forces himself to meet Finch's gaze, and hold it. 

"Believe me," he says, voice rough with eagerness, and Finch somewhat distantly says, "Both hands on my desk, then." 

John obeys. Immediately he's aware of the dampness of his palms fogging up the surface of the smooth, polished wood. In front of him, books and papers litter the desk's surface, the margins of notebooks filled with Mr. Finch's spidery scrawl. Behind him — 

He looks over his shoulder. Finch meets his eyes, takes in his fidgeting and reaches forward to cover John's hand with his own. 

"Any time you want to stop," he murmurs, and John murmurs back, "I know." 

"Well then," Finch says gently. He steps back, out of John's eyeline. “Pants and boxers, if you please."

Fumbling, John undoes his belt and pushes everything down past his knees. His cock is at half-mast, has been since the moment Mr Finch took the cane from him. Behind him, he hears Mr Finch shift on his feet. 

“Please,” John says again, and Finch says, “Well, seeing as you beg so beautifully,” and John stops thinking altogether. 

He flinches at the first touch, but it’s just Finch's hand running over his ass, dry heat that goes to his stomach.

“Did you do the reading?” Mr Finch asks. From his tone, they could be standing in the entrance hall, discussing the week’s assignment over a cup of coffee. 

“Yes.”

Mr Finch’s hand runs over his thighs, brushes between his legs. John swallows. “Tell me about… negative capability.”

“It’s uh,” John struggles to bring the words into his mind. “The idea that you don’t have to know everything. That uncertainty is more beautiful.”

“More or less,” Mr Finch says, delivering a smack. John bites down on a groan. “But key to the theme of acceptance is the idea that the poet becomes simply a vessel for art. He does not try to hammer down objective truth; he doesn’t have to do anything at all. He becomes merely an object on which the universe acts.”

John forgets to breathe. 

“You know you asked for this,” Mr Finch says, and John nods, bites his lip, his eyes fluttering closed as he drinks in his touch.

Then his hand is gone and John hears the blow before he feels it. It stings, barely there. He breathes out in a rush. “You can go harder.” 

“I don't recall asking you to speak,” Finch says, and John's cock twitches as a rain of light blows come down. It doesn't hurt, not really, not more than a vague irritation, and he thinks maybe he's asked too much of him— 

And he says, “Harold,” and he just has time to hear the air thrum before hot, bright pain streaks across his thighs. The world suddenly focuses to a pinpoint, sharp and beautiful. He gasps. 

Mr Finch says, “What was that?” 

John breathes through his nose hard. “Nothing.” 

“That's right,” says Finch, and cracks down again. John's hands are sweating on the desk where he's fighting to keep his palms flat, forcing himself not to move, not to protect himself. His thighs burn with the effort of keeping his feet on the ground as the cane hits him in earnest, every sense telling him to move, except Finch's voice in his head, which tells him to _stay_. 

He stays. 

Finch gives him three in quick succession, quickfire rapping out as John's knees tremble. 

“Look at you,” he murmurs into John's ear, “Aren't you being good, taking it so beautifully.” 

John's barely aware of his surroundings, high on pain and arousal, but Finch's words sink into his skin and he shudders with it.

“Please,” he says, with no idea of what he's asking for, “Please.” 

Finch's hand rests on his back, gentle, an anchor. “What do you need?”

He sounds so soft John wants to cry. John's voice is barely a whisper. “More.”

Harold waits for one second, two, and then the pain is back, a stroke of fire across his skin, the sound of it ringing in his ears. Hot tears spring to John's eyes and he blinks them away, hands on the desk balling into fists. 

He cries out at the next stroke. Finch doesn't relent, and John's grateful for it, loses himself in being acted upon, grasps at the freedom to let his body react. His skin sings with pain, but it's good, every new line bringing him further into a kind of euphoric haze where the pain surrounds him. His cock is leaking, and that's another kind of pain; the yearning in his stomach for the man giving him this. 

Finch breaks and steps closer, runs a hand over John's backside, barely touching, and John bites down on the hiss on his tongue and leans into it instead. 

“You've done so well,” Harold says softly. “You're so good, John.”

John bows his head and exhales. “Thank you,” he murmurs, and again, louder, his voice breaking on the words. 

“Any time,” Harold says, his hand moving in slow, firm circles. “Alright? Are we alright?” 

John wants to kiss him, wants all of him. His cock is jutting insistently into Harold's desk, Harold's hand still stroking his burning skin, the tingles and the memory of his voice only making him desperate. John says, “Harold—” 

And Harold says, “Alright.” He covers John's hand with his own and squeezes gently. “Don't move.” 

Then both his hands are on John's ass, and there’s pain, but it’s a different kind, precise stripes smoothed out into an itching buzz. Finch's hands are balm after the fire of the wood, and John breathes out, steady, welcomes it. 

Distantly he hears Harold getting to his knees, an awkward shuffle, and then Harold's tongue licks a hot wet swipe across his opening and John lets out a hiss that has nothing to do with pain.

"Alright?" Harold murmurs, going in again, and John _whimpers_ as the feeling sweeps straight to his core. Harold holds his cheeks apart firmly, and the burning mingles with the sweet drag of his tongue, pleasure and pain all mixed up together. John breathes raggedly, grips the desk with white knuckles. Harold's gentle, lapping softly at John's skin with just enough wide swipes to make John tremble.

When he licks into him John starts to beg. His cock is straining under the edge of the desk; there's an ache that builds with every touch, and he's right on the edge, Harold's mouth and hands a cresting blur of feeling that he can't separate out.

Harold reaches around to grasp his cock, gives him one, two strokes before John spills over his hand with his world wrenching, white and rough at the edges.

He comes back to himself slowly, somehow still upright, sagging against Harold's desk. Harold is there, his body pressed against John’s back, hands over John's chest, warm and firm. Holding John's heart in his palm, John thinks, and he has neither the energy nor the inclination to pretend he's being ironic.

"Hey," he says. His voice is hoarse in the stillness of the office. Fading evening light filters through the blinds, casting a pink softness over the room that reaches right into John's chest and _tugs_.

"Hey," Harold answers, lilting, soft next to his ear. "How are you feeling?"

John laughs, but then there's tears in his eyes and he has to bow his head to hide a sob.

Of course Harold notices.

"John," he says, and John can't bear the horror in his voice, the shock that he knows is directed away from him and onto Harold himself.

"It’s perfect," he gets out, both more and less than what he means. He covers Harold's hand with his own, holding it there against his chest, hoping the beat will convey something that he can't put into words.

He feels Harold relax slightly, and turns his head to face him. With deep, sated peace still settling in his bones, John kisses him. The way Harold closes his eyes, leans in to the kiss makes his heart sing. He regrets intensely the fact that they're in Harold's office; he has a sudden need to lie down, to stretch out with Harold and press every inch of his body against him; wants him shuddering under his touch. 

“Oh, you don't have to—” Harold starts as John sinks to his knees, but even through the haze of his afterglow John's a deft hand at undoing his fly. Harold's only half hard, but the dampness on his pants tells a different story from earlier. John thinks about Harold punishing him, kneeling for him; he tastes precome on Harold's cock and the knowledge of that sends a thrill down his spine. 

“I’m sorry,” Harold murmurs, “I’ll have to —” he steps backwards, sinks into his desk chair, and that’s even better, actually, because John can shuffle in between his legs, can rest his hands on Harold’s thighs and stroke them with firm heat as he takes Harold into his mouth. 

Harold's hard almost immediately; John wishes he could go slow and build this but all he can think is that he needs Harold trembling _now_ , needs to give him everything he can — reassurance as well as devotion, certainty in the face of beautiful chaos. 

Harold's hand falls to cup the base of John’s skull, and John closes his eyes, bliss shooting through him. He takes Harold right to the back of his throat and stays there, forces himself to swallow; he feels Harold shake at the sensation, his fingers carding through John’s hair, a stuttering mantra.

When Harold comes it's with John's name on his lips, his fingers anxiously tangled in John's hair. John doesn't miss a drop, drinks from him like a man dying of thirst and licks him clean, runs featherlight kisses along his cock until Harold starts to squirm. 

They stay like that for a while, John on his knees nestling into Harold's palm, his chest tight, his heart too full. When John raises his head, Harold’s gazing down at him, his eyes full of light, his lips parted slightly. 

John rises to meet him, and it’s slow, gentle, real. This is real. John feels it in his chest and in the way Harold sighs into his mouth, hand curling into his hair like a lost bird finding a home. 

* * *

EPILOGUE

John winces as he pulls his pants back over his glowing skin. “Are there any marks?” He’s aiming for casual, but overshoots by some way and lands on _eager_. Damn it. 

“Of course not,” Harold says, sounding mildly horrified, although John’s starting to think he’s nowhere near as innocent as he purports to be. “At least, nothing that will last beyond an hour or so. You don’t really think I'd leave marks on you?”

John quite likes the idea of sitting in class with marks under his clothes that Mr Finch put there, and Harold can obviously tell what he’s thinking because he shoots John a tired look and mutters, “Oh, really.” 

John grins. Maybe next time.


End file.
